Gaming Hard Drives

[FiberoN]

I am making a new pc right now and I'm about to order the parts next week. I have one question. I plan on mostly playing games ( HL, HL2, UT2k4, FarCry, etc) and I am thinking of getting 1 74gb Raptor. Do I REALLY need a 10k rpm drive for gaming? Does it really make a difference? I think I can get along pretty good with 2 Seagates of about 80gb. What do you think?

 

[Bar81]

No need, all it does is decrease level load times. A current generation 7200rpm 8MB cache SATA drive will suit you just fine and leave money in your pocket to upgrade other items if you so desire.

 

[dudeman007]

Depends on your wallet. A lot of people on ATOT will highly recommend them, and they should because they are amazing drives. In my opinion though, I'd rather go for a bigger drive than the faster one. The other SATA drives load games just fine.

 

[oldman420]

i have this theory involving sata and windows stability. in my system at least, i got lots of stutter and poor overall performance in gaming. i removed all sata from my system just to test, and the stutter is gone. other things seem more stable too i used to get explorer crashes 2-3 times daily and now since im running on ide drives things are better no crashes yet. i know that my hardware was good, siig ,and wd so either i am an idiot or sata kinda bogs down everything in xp. i think that future generations of sata will be more stable but for now if you want speed get a cheeta scsi drive. scsi works great with windows!!!

 

[DemiSheep]

I ordered yesterday a 73GB raptor and a 250gb Western digital SATA 8mg cache drive...

raptor for my main OS 250gb for storage and my other 200gb drive for backups...

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: DemiSheep
I ordered yesterday a 73GB raptor and a 250gb Western digital SATA 8mg cache drive...

raptor for my main OS 250gb for storage and my other 200gb drive for backups...

Best way to do it IMO. I've got 2 36GB Raptors in a RAID0 for my programs and OS and an 80GB drive for media and CD images.

 

[Cerb]

No. If you spend the money for the Raptor on RAM, you won't need to use the swap file. If you don't need to use the swap file, you don't need the hard drive for anything but file loading and saving.
Now, a smaller Raptor and bigger 7200 RPM drive will make a very snappy combo, as booting and general use (email, web browsing, etc.) use the HD all the time.

 

[DemiSheep]

As well as my two hard drives I ordered I also ordered a motherboard/CPU and 1GB of memory..... So it shouldnt need much of a swap file..

 

[CraigRT]

i am sticking with IDE for now myself too.

 

[mitchafi]

I like the decreased load/installation times that my raptor provides. It's got a 5 year warranty so it's not going anywhere fast. Worthy investment if you ask me.

 

[n7]

I really wanted a 74 GB Raptor, but it basically came down to either that or a 250 GB WD Caviar.
I kinda needed the space a bit more...er well to be more honest, i didn't feel like burning 250 GBs of stuff to DVD, so i went for the larger drive.
My Barracuda SATA does a good job running my OS i think, but now for sure, my next HDD will be a Raptor.

 

[JBT]

I love my 74 GB Raptor it loads everything nice and quick I Was going to get bigger drivers and RAID them but I really don't use all that much space. I really love this things fast seek times and little SATA cables are SO much clearner than IDE's. The one problem I did notiec was that the SATA cables could snap the head right off the drive with out much effort. So I bought a secure connect SATA cable at zipzoomfly for 10 bucks and havn't worried since.

 

[IPLaw]

Having 1GB Ram will make your gaming experience better than having a raptor - I would rather have fluid gameply than shorter load times. For example, UT4K hiccups with 512 ram.

 

[OdiN]

Originally posted by: oldman420
i have this theory involving sata and windows stability. in my system at least, i got lots of stutter and poor overall performance in gaming. i removed all sata from my system just to test, and the stutter is gone. other things seem more stable too i used to get explorer crashes 2-3 times daily and now since im running on ide drives things are better no crashes yet. i know that my hardware was good, siig ,and wd so either i am an idiot or sata kinda bogs down everything in xp. i think that future generations of sata will be more stable but for now if you want speed get a cheeta scsi drive. scsi works great with windows!!!

That isn't right. My system has 2 SATA RAID 0 arrays. 2 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 and 2 WD 120GB SATA drives in RAID 0. Raptors for OS/Major programs, 120's for some other various programs, data storage etc. I also have one 120GB IDE WD for data backups. There is no stuttering or anything at all. I have also built several SATA-only machines without that problem. However, I never used a Siig at all....don't really like their products.

 

[SilentZero]

Depends on your wallet. I run 2 74gb raptors, which one is only for games (for the most part), and to me, its not a HUGE difference from a SATA drive. If moneys a consideration, just get a IDE 8mb cache drive or a SATA, as opposed to the raptor.

 

[Arcanedeath]

for playing games about the only diff w/ the raptor is faster level load times, not much else so if cost or capisity is an issue skip the raptor, if performance is the primary concern then the raptor is your drive , personaly I just can't justify the cost of one compared to my 250GB 8meg cache WD PATA drive, for STR tasks it's not that much worse than the raptor so lvl load times are not realy painful, although the raptor would be nice if I get some spare change

 

[oldman420]

maybe the siig chipsets are not good i wish i could run sata but oh well

 

[FiberoN]

Hmm, I'm going to get a seagate 120gb sata and a 36gb raptor for the os and some games. Thanks a lot guys.

 

[Runner20]

I'm a big gamer and I won't buy a Raptor. Hard drives don't make the difference in speed and there is no justification to spend all that money on only a 74gb drive. You can get twice or more capacity for that price and you won't even notice the performance difference between them.

 

[fsstrike]

What is a raptor exactly and what are its benefits?

 

[Runner20]

Originally posted by: fsstrike
What is a raptor exactly and what are its benefits?

It's a hard drive at 10000 rpm. Faster than a regular 7200 rpm hard drive. Not worth it however.

 

[Hyperlite]

like most other people said, its hard to justify unless you are for die-hard performance. you can get more than twice the storage at $30 less with a normal SATA drive.

 

[NokiaDude]

If I had $150 to spend on just HD space or RAM, I'd buy more RAM, becuase you can never have enough!!

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: fsstrike
What is a raptor exactly and what are its benefits?

A 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive. On desktop tasks (not multi-user), it's as speedy as a 15,000 RPM Fujitsu SCSI. Cheaper both as a drive and given you can get controllers and cables cheap (+$10 for a SATA-supporting mobo).

Now, make it a server or do MechBgon-style daily virus scans and you'll be happier with a 7200 RPM SCSI. But 99% of desktop folks won't anything that heavy except boot-up and shut-down. When controllers supporting command queuing hit the streets, the Raptor may prove to be a good compromise for low-end servers.

A raptor will be worth more to your boss doing mail and web surfing than to you doing gaming

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: DemiSheep
As well as my two hard drives I ordered I also ordered a motherboard/CPU and 1GB of memory..... So it shouldnt need much of a swap file..

It'll use a swap file whether you need it or not. Expect about 1GB of your system drive to be taken from you. 1GB isn't as much memory as it seems.